Portal:Mathematics

The Mathematics Portal

Mathematics is the study of representing and reasoning about abstract objects (such as numbers, points, spaces, sets, structures, and games). Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered. (Full article...)

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High-precision test of general relativity by the Cassini space probe (artist's impression): radio signals sent between the Earth and the probe (green wave) are delayed by the warping of spacetime (blue lines) due to the Sun's mass.

General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915. The theory of general relativity says that the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of spacetime.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's law of universal gravitation had been accepted for more than two hundred years as a valid description of the gravitational force between masses. In Newton's model, gravity is the result of an attractive force between massive objects. Although even Newton was troubled by the unknown nature of that force, the basic framework was extremely successful at describing motion. (Full article...)
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Noether c. 1900–1910

Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's first and second theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics. Noether was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was the mathematician Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations, but instead studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, where her father lectured. After completing her doctorate in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years. At the time, women were largely excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of Privatdozent. (Full article...)
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In algebraic geometry and theoretical physics, mirror symmetry is a relationship between geometric objects called Calabi–Yau manifolds. The term refers to a situation where two Calabi–Yau manifolds look very different geometrically but are nevertheless equivalent when employed as extra dimensions of string theory.

Early cases of mirror symmetry were discovered by physicists. Mathematicians became interested in this relationship around 1990 when Philip Candelas, Xenia de la Ossa, Paul Green, and Linda Parkes showed that it could be used as a tool in enumerative geometry, a branch of mathematics concerned with counting the number of solutions to geometric questions. Candelas and his collaborators showed that mirror symmetry could be used to count rational curves on a Calabi–Yau manifold, thus solving a longstanding problem. Although the original approach to mirror symmetry was based on physical ideas that were not understood in a mathematically precise way, some of its mathematical predictions have since been proven rigorously. (Full article...)
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Plots of logarithm functions, with three commonly used bases. The special points $log b b = 1$ are indicated by dotted lines, and all curves intersect in $log b 1 = 0$ .

In mathematics, the logarithm of a number is the exponent by which another fixed value, the base, must be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of $1000$ to base $10$ is $3$ , because $1000$ is $10$ to the $3$ rd power: $1000 = 10 3 = 10 \times 10 \times 10$ . More generally, if $x = b y$ , then $y$ is the logarithm of $x$ to base $b$ , written $log b x$ , so $log 10 1000 = 3$ . As a single-variable function, the logarithm to base $b$ is the inverse of exponentiation with base $b$ .

The logarithm base $10$ is called the decimal or common logarithm and is commonly used in science and engineering. The natural logarithm has the number $e \approx 2.718$ as its base; its use is widespread in mathematics and physics because of its very simple derivative. The binary logarithm uses base $2$ and is widely used in computer science, information theory, music theory, and photography. When the base is unambiguous from the context or irrelevant it is often omitted, and the logarithm is written $log x$ . (Full article...)
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Émile Michel Hyacinthe Lemoine (French: [emil ləmwan]; 22 November 1840 – 21 February 1912) was a French civil engineer and a mathematician, a geometer in particular. He was educated at a variety of institutions, including the Prytanée National Militaire and, most notably, the École Polytechnique. Lemoine taught as a private tutor for a short period after his graduation from the latter school.

Lemoine is best known for his proof of the existence of the Lemoine point (or the symmedian point) of a triangle. Other mathematical work includes a system he called Géométrographie and a method which related algebraic expressions to geometric objects. He has been called a co-founder of modern triangle geometry, as many of its characteristics are present in his work. (Full article...)
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Cantor, c. 1910

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (/ˈkæntɔːr/ KAN-tor; German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfɛʁdinant ˈluːtvɪç ˈfiːlɪp ˈkantoːɐ̯]; 3 March [O.S. 19 February] 1845 – 6 January 1918) was a mathematician who played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are more numerous than the natural numbers. Cantor's method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an infinity of infinities. He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact he was well aware of.

Originally, Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was regarded as counter-intuitive – even shocking. This caused it to encounter resistance from mathematical contemporaries such as Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré and later from Hermann Weyl and L. E. J. Brouwer, while Ludwig Wittgenstein raised philosophical objections; see Controversy over Cantor's theory. Cantor, a devout Lutheran Christian, believed the theory had been communicated to him by God. Some Christian theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor's work as a challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected. Not all theologians were against Cantor's theory; prominent neo-scholastic philosopher Konstantin Gutberlet [de; it] was in favor of it and Cardinal Johann Baptist Franzelin accepted it as a valid theory (after Cantor made some important clarifications). (Full article...)
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The number π (/paɪ/ ; spelled out as pi) is a mathematical constant, approximately equal to 3.14159, that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics, and some of these formulae are commonly used for defining π, to avoid relying on the definition of the length of a curve.

The number π is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers, although fractions such as 22 7 {\displaystyle {\tfrac {22}{7}}} are commonly used to approximate it. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends, nor enters a permanently repeating pattern. It is a transcendental number, meaning that it cannot be a solution of an algebraic equation involving only finite sums, products, powers, and integers. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge. The decimal digits of π appear to be randomly distributed, but no proof of this conjecture has been found. (Full article...)
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Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams and is widely used. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time. (Full article...)
$Image 9 Portrait by August Köhler, c. 1910, after 1620 original Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. He has been described as the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium. Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work. He is also known for postulating the Kepler conjecture. (Full article...)$

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Portrait by August Köhler, c. 1910, after 1620 original

Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. He has been described as the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium.

Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein.
Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work. He is also known for postulating the Kepler conjecture. (Full article...)
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General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever is
present, including matter and radiation. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second-order partial differential equations.

Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes gravity in classical mechanics, can be seen as a prediction of general relativity for the almost flat spacetime geometry around stationary mass distributions. Some predictions of general relativity, however, are beyond Newton's law of universal gravitation in classical physics. These predictions concern the passage of time, the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light, and include gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift of light, the Shapiro time delay and singularities/black holes. So far, all tests of general relativity have been shown to be in agreement with the theory. The time-dependent solutions of general relativity enable us to talk about the history of the universe and have provided the modern framework for cosmology, thus leading to the discovery of the Big Bang and cosmic microwave background radiation. Despite the introduction of a number of alternative theories, general relativity continues to be the simplest theory consistent with experimental data. (Full article...)
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In classical mechanics, the Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector (LRL vector) is a vector used chiefly to describe the shape and orientation of the orbit of one astronomical body around another, such as a binary star or a planet revolving around a star. For two bodies interacting by Newtonian gravity, the LRL vector is a constant of motion, meaning that it is the same no matter where it is calculated on the orbit; equivalently, the LRL vector is said to be conserved. More generally, the LRL vector is conserved in all problems in which two bodies interact by a central force that varies as the inverse square of the distance between them; such problems are called Kepler problems.

Thus the hydrogen atom is a Kepler problem, since it comprises two charged particles interacting by Coulomb's law of electrostatics, another inverse-square central force. The LRL vector was essential in the first quantum mechanical derivation of the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, before the development of the Schrödinger equation. However, this approach is rarely used today. (Full article...)
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Josiah Willard Gibbs (/ɡɪbz/; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American mechanical engineer and scientist who made fundamental theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous deductive science. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, he created statistical mechanics (a term that he coined), explaining the laws of thermodynamics as consequences of the statistical properties of ensembles of the possible states of a physical system composed of many particles. Gibbs also worked on the application of Maxwell's equations to problems in physical optics. As a mathematician, he created modern vector calculus (independently of the British scientist Oliver Heaviside, who carried out similar work during the same period) and described the Gibbs phenomenon in the theory of Fourier analysis.

In 1863, Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American doctorate in engineering. After a three-year sojourn in Europe, Gibbs spent the rest of his career at Yale, where he was a professor of mathematical physics from 1871 until his death in 1903. Working in relative isolation, he became the earliest theoretical scientist in the United States to earn an international reputation and was praised by Albert Einstein as "the greatest mind in American history". In 1901, Gibbs received what was then considered the highest honor awarded by the international scientific community, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, "for his contributions to mathematical physics". (Full article...)
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The weighing pans of this balance scale contain zero objects, divided into two equal groups.

In mathematics, zero is an even number. In other words, its parity—the quality of an integer being even or odd—is even. This can be easily verified based on the definition of "even": zero is an integer multiple of 2, specifically 0 × 2. As a result, zero shares all the properties that characterize even numbers: for example, 0 is neighbored on both sides by odd numbers, any decimal integer has the same parity as its last digit—so, since 10 is even, 0 will be even, and if $y$ is even then $y + x$ has the same parity as $x$ —indeed, $0 + x$ and $x$ always have the same parity.

Zero also fits into the patterns formed by other even numbers. The parity rules of arithmetic, such as even − even = even, require 0 to be even. Zero is the additive identity element of the group of even integers, and it is the starting case from which other even natural numbers are recursively defined. Applications of this recursion from graph theory to computational geometry rely on zero being even. Not only is 0 divisible by 2, it is divisible by every power of 2, which is relevant to the binary numeral system used by computers. In this sense, 0 is the "most even" number of all. (Full article...)
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Archimedes Thoughtful by Fetti (1620)

Archimedes of Syracuse (/ˌɑːrkɪˈmiːdiːz/ AR-kih-MEE-deez; c. 287 – c. 212 BC) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, based on his surviving work, he is considered one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity, and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove many geometrical theorems, including the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.

Archimedes' other mathematical achievements include deriving an approximation of pi ( $π$ ), defining and investigating the Archimedean spiral, and devising a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, working on statics and hydrostatics. Archimedes' achievements in this area include a proof of the law of the lever, the widespread use of the concept of center of gravity, and the enunciation of the law of buoyancy known as Archimedes' principle. In astronomy, he made measurements of the apparent diameter of the Sun and the size of the universe. He is also said to have built a planetarium device that demonstrated the movements of the known celestial bodies, and may have been a precursor to the Antikythera mechanism. He is also credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion. (Full article...)
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A stamp of Zhang Heng issued by China Post in 1955

Zhang Heng (Chinese: 張衡; AD 78–139), formerly romanized Chang Heng, was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman who lived during the Eastern Han dynasty. Educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, he achieved success as an astronomer, mathematician, seismologist, hydraulic engineer, inventor, geographer, cartographer, ethnographer, artist, poet, philosopher, politician, and literary scholar.

Zhang Heng began his career as a minor civil servant in Nanyang. Eventually, he became Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. His uncompromising stance on historical and calendrical issues led to his becoming a controversial figure, preventing him from rising to the status of Grand Historian. His political rivalry with the palace eunuchs during the reign of Emperor Shun (r. 125–144) led to his decision to retire from the central court to serve as an administrator of Hejian Kingdom in present-day Hebei. Zhang returned home to Nanyang for a short time, before being recalled to serve in the capital once more in 138. He died there a year later, in 139. (Full article...)

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a smooth surface, vaguely conical in shape and embedded in a basket-like mesh of points, rotates in empty space

Non-uniform rational B-spline

Credit: Greg L

Non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) are commonly used in computer graphics for generating and representing curves and surfaces for both analytic shapes (described by mathematical formulas) and modeled shapes. Here the shape of the surface is determined by control points, shown as small spheres surrounding the surface itself. The square at the bottom sets the maximum width and length of the surface. Based on early work by Pierre Bézier and Paul de Casteljau, NURBS are generalizations of both B-splines (basis splines) and Bézier curves and surfaces. Unlike simple Bézier curves and surfaces, which are non-rational, NURBS can represent exactly certain analytic shapes such as conic sections and spherical sections. They are widely used in computer-aided design (CAD), manufacturing (CAM), and engineering (CAE), although T-splines and subdivision surfaces may be more suitable for more complex organic shapes.

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Image 1
In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative integer $n$ , denoted by $n!$ , is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to $n$ . The factorial of $n$ also equals the product of $n$ with the next smaller factorial:
$<br>{\begin{aligned}n!&=n\times (n-1)\times (n-2)\times (n-3)\times \cdots \times 3\times 2\times 1\\<br>&=n\times (n-1)!\\<br>\end{aligned}}$
For example,
$5!=5\times 4!=5\times 4\times 3\times 2\times 1=120.$
The value of 0! is 1, according to the convention for an empty product.

Factorials have been discovered in several ancient cultures, notably in Indian mathematics in the canonical works of Jain literature, and by Jewish mystics in the Talmudic book Sefer Yetzirah. The factorial operation is encountered in many areas of mathematics, notably in combinatorics, where its most basic use counts the possible distinct sequences – the permutations – of $n$ distinct objects: there are $n!$ . In mathematical analysis, factorials are used in power series for the exponential function and other functions, and they also have applications in algebra, number theory, probability theory, and computer science. (Full article...)
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Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku (20 March 1941 – 13 February 2022) was a Nigerian mathematician and academic, known for his contributions to the fields of algebraic K-theory and non-commutative geometry. Born in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria, Kuku began his academic journey at Makerere University College and the University of Ibadan, where he earned his B.Sc. in Mathematics, followed by his M.Sc. and Ph.D. under Joshua Leslie and Hyman Bass. His doctoral research focused on the Whitehead group of p-adic integral group-rings of finite p-groups. Kuku held positions as a lecturer and professor at various Nigerian universities, including the University of Ife and the University of Ibadan, where he served as Head of the Department of Mathematics and Dean of the Postgraduate School. His research involved developing methods for computing higher K-theory of non-commutative rings and articulating higher algebraic K-theory in the language of Mackey functors. His work on equivariant higher algebraic K-theory and its generalisations impacted the field.

During his career, Kuku was elected a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, the Nigerian Academy of Science, and the American Mathematical Society. He also received the Nigerian National Order of Merit and the Officer of the Order of the Niger. He served as president of the African Mathematical Union, where he worked to promote mathematics across Africa. Kuku's work extended beyond research, encompassing education and mentorship. He authored several books and articles, supervised graduate students, and fostered international collaborations. (Full article...)
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In geometry, a square pyramid is a pyramid with a square base and four triangles, having a total of five faces. If the apex of the pyramid is directly above the center of the square, it is a right square pyramid with four isosceles triangles; otherwise, it is an oblique square pyramid. When all of the pyramid's edges are equal in length, its triangles are all equilateral. It is called an equilateral square pyramid, an example of a Johnson solid.

Square pyramids have appeared throughout the history of architecture, with examples being Egyptian pyramids and many other similar buildings. They also occur in chemistry in square pyramidal molecular structures. Square pyramids are often used in the construction of other polyhedra. Many mathematicians in ancient times discovered the formula for the volume of a square pyramid with different approaches. (Full article...)
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The graph of the 3-3 duoprism (the line graph of $K_{3,3}$ ) is perfect. Here it is colored with three colors, with one of its 3-vertex maximum cliques highlighted.

In graph theory, a perfect graph is a graph in which the chromatic number equals the size of the maximum clique, both in the graph itself and in every induced subgraph. In all graphs, the chromatic number is greater than or equal to the size of the maximum clique, but they can be far apart. A graph is perfect when these numbers are equal, and remain equal after the deletion of arbitrary subsets of vertices.

The perfect graphs include many important families of graphs and serve to unify results relating colorings and cliques in those families. For instance, in all perfect graphs, the graph coloring problem, maximum clique problem, and maximum independent set problem can all be solved in polynomial time, despite their greater complexity for non-perfect graphs. In addition, several important minimax theorems in combinatorics, including Dilworth's theorem and Mirsky's theorem on partially ordered sets, Kőnig's theorem on matchings, and the Erdős–Szekeres theorem on monotonic sequences, can be expressed in terms of the perfection of certain associated graphs. (Full article...)
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Turing in 1951

Alan Mathison Turing (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.

Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, and in 1938, earned a doctorate degree from Princeton University. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. He led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Turing devised techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bomba method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. He played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in the Battle of the Atlantic and other engagements. (Full article...)
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Alexandrov's theorem on polyhedra is a rigidity theorem in mathematics, describing three-dimensional convex polyhedra in terms of the distances between points on their surfaces. It implies that convex polyhedra with distinct shapes from each other also have distinct metric spaces of surface distances, and it characterizes the metric spaces that come from the surface distances on polyhedra. It is named after Soviet mathematician Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, who published it in the 1940s. (Full article...)
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Wave functions of the electron in a hydrogen atom at different energy levels. Quantum mechanics cannot predict the exact location of a particle in space, only the probability of finding it at different locations. The brighter areas represent a higher probability of finding the electron.

Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. It is the foundation of all quantum physics, which includes quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.

Quantum mechanics can describe many systems that classical physics cannot. Classical physics can describe many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic and (optical) microscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at very small submicroscopic (atomic and subatomic) scales. Classical mechanics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation that is valid at ordinary scales. (Full article...)
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1963 statue of Anania Shirakatsi holding a globe at the entrance of the Matenadaran

Anania Shirakatsi (Old Armenian: Անանիա Շիրակացի, Anania Širakac’i, anglicized: Ananias of Shirak) was a 7th-century Armenian polymath and natural philosopher, author of extant works covering mathematics, astronomy, geography, chronology, and other fields. Little is known for certain of his life outside of his own writings, but he is considered the father of the exact and natural sciences in Armenia—the first Armenian mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer.

A part of the Armenian Hellenizing School and one of the few secular scholars in medieval Armenia, Anania was educated primarily by Tychicus, in Trebizond. He composed science textbooks and the first known geographic work in classical Armenian (Ashkharhatsuyts), which provides detailed information about Greater Armenia, Persia and the Caucasus (Georgia and Caucasian Albania). (Full article...)
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An antiparallelogram

In geometry, an antiparallelogram is a type of self-crossing quadrilateral. Like a parallelogram, an antiparallelogram has two opposite pairs of equal-length sides, but these pairs of sides are not in general parallel. Instead, each pair of sides is antiparallel with respect to the other, with sides in the longer pair crossing each other as in a scissors mechanism. Whereas a parallelogram's opposite angles are equal and oriented the same way, an antiparallelogram's are equal but oppositely oriented. Antiparallelograms are also called contraparallelograms or crossed parallelograms.

Antiparallelograms occur as the vertex figures of certain nonconvex uniform polyhedra. In the theory of four-bar linkages, the linkages with the form of an antiparallelogram are also called butterfly linkages or bow-tie linkages, and are used in the design of non-circular gears. In celestial mechanics, they occur in certain families of solutions to the 4-body problem. (Full article...)
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In mathematics and computer science, the BIT predicate, sometimes written ${\text{BIT}}(i,j)$ , is a predicate that tests whether the $j$ th bit of the number $i$ (starting from the least significant digit) is 1, when $i$ is written as a binary number. Its mathematical applications include modeling the membership relation of hereditarily finite sets, and defining the adjacency relation of the Rado graph. In computer science, it is used for efficient representations of set data structures using bit vectors, in defining the private information retrieval problem from communication complexity, and in descriptive complexity theory to formulate logical descriptions of complexity classes. (Full article...)
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Official portrait, 2014

José Félix Mendieta Villarroel (born 15 November 1958) is a Bolivian politician and trade unionist who served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from Cochabamba, representing circumscription 28 from 2010 to 2015.

Though educated in pedagogy, Mendieta spent most of his career in commercial driving, climbing the ranks of the sector's trade unions to eventually become general secretary of the Sacaba Mixed Motor Transport Union. Though traditionally conservative, under the leadership of figures like Mendieta, many of the country's drivers' unions were reoriented towards the left. (Full article...)
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Selected witch of Agnesi curves (green), and the circles they are constructed from (blue), with radius parameters $a=1$ , $a=2$ , $a=4$ , and $a=8$ .

In mathematics, the witch of Agnesi (Italian pronunciation: [aɲˈɲeːzi, -eːsi; -ɛːzi]) is a cubic plane curve defined from two diametrically opposite points of a circle.

The curve was studied as early as 1653 by Pierre de Fermat, in 1703 by Guido Grandi, and by Isaac Newton. It gets its name from Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi who published it in 1748. The Italian name la versiera di Agnesi is based on Latin versoria (sheet of sailing ships) and the sinus versus.
This was read by John Colson as l’avversiera di Agnesi, where avversiera is translated as "woman who is against God" and interpreted as "witch". (Full article...)

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...that the Pythagorean Theorem generalizes to any three similar shapes on the three sides of a right-angled triangle?
...that the orthocenter, circumcenter, centroid and the centre of the nine-point circle all lie on one line, the Euler line?
...that an arbitrary quadrilateral will tessellate?
...that it has not been proven whether or not every even integer greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes?
...that the sum of the first n odd numbers divided by the sum of the next n odd numbers is always equal to one third?
...that i to the power of i, where i is the square root of -1, is a real number?
...an infinite, nonrepeating decimal can be represented using only the number 1 using continued fractions?

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A dodecahedron, one of the five Platonic solids
Image credit: User:DTR

A regular polytope is a geometric figure with a high degree of symmetry. Examples in two dimensions include the square, the regular pentagon and hexagon, and so on. In three dimensions the regular polytopes include the cube, the dodecahedron, and all other Platonic solids. Other Platonic solids include the tetrahedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron. Examples exist in higher dimensions also, such as the 5-dimensional hendecatope. Circles and spheres, although highly symmetric, are not considered polytopes because they do not have flat faces. The strong symmetry of the regular polytopes gives them an aesthetic quality that interests both non-mathematicians and mathematicians.

Many regular polytopes, at least in two and three dimensions, exist in nature and have been known since prehistory. The earliest surviving mathematical treatment of these objects comes to us from ancient Greek mathematicians such as Euclid. Indeed, Euclid wrote a systematic study of mathematics, publishing it under the title Elements, which built up a logical theory of geometry and number theory. His work concluded with mathematical descriptions of the five Platonic solids. (Full article...)

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